The number of people becoming intentionally homeless across Mid Devon has “spiked.”

In a report to Mid Devon District Council on Tuesday, May 22, Mike Parker, Housing Options Manager, said the number had “spiked”.

The report said: “The number of households found to be intentionally homeless is increasing within the District and across England. This is due to issues such as high private rents, spare bedroom deduction, welfare reform and universal credit, issues which have resulted in tenants across all tenures failing to make the required rent payments. Increasingly, those seeking assistance have rent arrears and other debts, and cannot achieve financial resilience, for various reasons.”

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Speaking at the meeting, Mr Parker added: “As part of people coming through the front door when they are threatened with homelessness we offer a deposit and advance rent budget summary. It’s likely the spend on this is likely to increase and they projecting this year’s homeless approaches will be up by a third for 18/19, so again the money we’re paying out on deposits to help people secure accommodation is likely to rise.

“We do struggle with many of our local bed and breakfasts across Mid Devon as over the years they have maybe had some problems with some people that we send and therefore they have declined. Now we are having to use alternate places, and the accommodation is out of the Mid Devon area.”

Mr Parker said that whenever people are placed in temporary accommodation a risk assessment is carried out to determine the impact, it would have on their employment and education needs.

“Mid Devon is in line with the rest of England in a rise in accepting homeless people coming through the front door so although it’s risen steeply over the last few years,” he added, saying it was in line with the rest of the country.

“For anyone coming through the front door, we need to decide on how they have become homeless. Our first job is to prevent them from becoming homeless, and if that fails, we try and relieve their homelessness. We try to find them somewhere else to live; that could be with another landlord, social housing, or it could be with other friends or family. That is our main two objectives if somebody is coming through the front door.

“If that fails we look at whether or not somebody is intentionally homeless and over the last couple of years that has spiked. That could be through failure to pay rent or being kicked out of the accommodation that they’re in, but we are seeing an increase in applicants becoming intentionally homeless. That’s all defined under the Homelessness Act.”

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In the last year, Mid Devon District Council has had more than 450 approaches by those under threat of being made homeless compared to 700 in 2008/09. It was estimated that this number would increase from April 2018 with the new Homelessness Reduction Act with authorities placing more people in temporary accommodation for more extended periods.

Mr Parker added: “This has had an impact on frontline officers. The average interview is taking around two to two and half hours per person, so we are not able to see so many people during each day.

“The cost of helping applicants seek alternate accommodation across the district has dropped over the last few years however we are finding it more difficult to assist applicants coming through the front door because private landlords are unwilling to take some of the applicants coming through our front door.”

Mr Parker added that prevention work was vital for the Council. He said: “We have done prevention work and we are different to national statistics whereby we are doing more to help people relieve their homelessness. This is rather than them coming through the front door and us accepting a full duty towards them and providing them temporary accommodation and social housing. We can provide prevention work, so the full housing duty is not owed.”

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Mr Parker also discussed rough sleepers in Mid Devon adding: “Last year we had four rough sleepers in the area.

“We had one in Crediton which remains. He is happy, and his final goal is to move to East Devon, but he’s not ready to go. We have one in Tiverton and a couple who were also sleeping rough in Tiverton during November.

Crediton War Memorial

“Rough sleeping is increasing across the country, and we are in line with the national averages. It did peak in 2015. It just so happened that on the day we go out, we have to advertise that we are doing a rough sleeping count and a few more people were seen on the street.”